Last
night I swapped out the Tenor 175S stereo amp for the mbl 9008A
Reference monos. Expectations were two-fold: 1) the specs told a story
of vastly more power than the Tenor; 2) I couldn't imagine the
solid-state 9008A approaching the hybrid Tenor's tone, not to mention
its timbre, which is simply gorgeous. The latter is where I expected a
big falloff.

The
9008As were virgin: we broke the seal on the flight case. I figured I
wouldn't pay them much mind for a couple of days. But lo, the major
burn-in happened overnight and by the next morning I couldn't help
tuning in because the seduction had begun.

MBL's Pedigree

Ah, the
house sound of MBL's Reference Line! (Now under new distribution in
North America by MBL North America, Inc.,
a subsidiary of MBL Germany.) It is quite familiar to me—the mbl 6010D
preamp resides in my reference system. I also had in the mbl 9007
monoblocks, one rung down from the 9008A, for a lengthy audition. Plus,
the brand is always well represented at trade shows.

On the
test bench these products make technicians salivate by generating
admirable specs and response curves. The 9008A not only conforms to the
family profile—it helped establish MBL's reputation at the highest
levels of the High-End. In my listening room, the 9008A is smooth and
grainless—it doesn't even exhibit a solid-state grain structure. It
sounds warmish-neutral and wonderfully full-bodied, with trendsetting,
controlled bass that's quite a bit different from most, and
sweet, articulated treble. And so quiet—there is virtually no noise
floor. Behind it all, you can't fail to note an unmistakable sense of
overwhelming power just waiting to express itself.

The
9008A is comparatively dark. Going from the Tenor to the MBL, I had to
re-voice the system to lighten things up, to help the treble emerge.
With that said, frequency response is as smooth and even as it gets.

The
9008A sounds wonderful—no surprise there. It is one of the top three
amps I've auditioned, right up there alongside the Tenor 175S and the
Soulution 710. OK, now that I've established its pedigree, what I'd like
to do is compare the 9008A to its classmates. I figure this will give
you maximum insight on how things differ at the top of this price range.
(The 9008A MSRP is $60,600; the Tenor is $55,000; the Soulution is
$50,000.)

The
Dynamic Authority

Let's
start with item one. Where the Tenor had noticeably more dynamic
headroom than the Soulution, I expected the MBL to be another dramatic
leap up. My hunch was on the mark, but it turned out to be overstated.

Go
ahead—put on the big stuff. Let me suggest Shostakovich: Symphony No.
8, a new recording with Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool
Philharmonic Orchestra (Naxos 8.572392). If you like Shostakovich, you
must check out what Petrenko is doing. The unlikely combination of a
young Russian at the helm of a second-tier British orchestra has
produced what many are considering a “must have” Shostakovich symphony
cycle.

Go
ahead—crank it up loud. Symphony No. 8 has extended tutti passages.
Rather than the occasional whack on the bass drum, it features sustained
tympani and bass drum rolls that go on for nearly half a minute at peak
SPLs. Try that with your current amp. I'll bet it whimps out, exhausted
in short order under this kind of demand. With the 9008A you won't hear
dynamic compression or a change in quality. It's the difference between
a V8 and a V6 automobile engine. One car may go as fast as the other,
but the passengers' experience of the ride is not the same. There is no
rattling this amp—it is confident and authoritative. If your thing is
massive symphonic forces, the 9008A is what you've been waiting for.

There is
no question the 9008A moves ahead of the Tenor. The loudest crescendo
fills my room with a quality of dynamic room engagement I have not
experienced before. Even though it wasn't the doubling I was
anticipating we were cresting at unheard of heights.

Actually, it's almost too much for the room. The notion that my room is
the limiting factor cropped up occasionally with the Tenor. With the
9008A, I'm more aware of it—visitors routinely mention it now. I'm
maxing out, hitting a plateau given the 12' x 33' x 8' dimensions.

The
9008A is not only über powerful, but the quality of these dynamic
events is immaculate. Let me explain. I've been listening to a lot of
chamber music lately in my quest to discover the desert island
recordings of Dvorak's chamber works. One of the things I'm learning
about in the process is how variably dynamic markings can be interpreted
at the loud end.

On many
recordings, especially those with younger musicians, they pull out all
the stops and go for broke when they see a crescendo marking. The
results can be exhilarating, true, but also markedly different in
quality from when they play medium or softly. Why can't they just play
louder without going nuts? Case in point: the Grammy-winning Pavel Haas
Quartet. Based on the PR, I purchased a couple of their CDs. Alas, I
found them just as guilty of this offense. Furthermore, their
interpretation was charmless—a thorough disappointment. Makes me wonder
if there's a back-story behind the award. The CD was summarily recycled
down the food chain.

My
current favorite groups, the Leipzig and Prazak quartets, play with a
consistency of tone, regardless of the dynamic marking. That means there
is no break in quality over the length of the piece. The 9008A does
this, too. When a crescendo is called for, it plays louder; it doesn't
change and start to sound like a different amplifier. And within the
crescendo, some instruments get louder, while other ones remain at the
same dynamic, all per the dictates of the score. It's not like you've
turned up the volume and had an across-the-board increase. Loud or soft,
there is no hint of stress at any SPL. The 9008A is the ultimate in
composed.

Damping Factor

The
9008A played games with time. I'm listening to Martha Argerich and
Nelson Freire on the CD SALZBURG (DG 477 8570), a live concert
recording of their 2009 Salzburg Festival duo piano recital.

Martha
lays out the principal theme on Variations on a Theme of Joseph Haydn
by Brahms. The second piano starts up a counterpoint. Both of these
events are so discretely elucidated and each instrument's image so
isolated on the soundstage as to give the distinct impression of notes
coming and going entirely independent of one another. The expanded space
between the image artifacts instills a sense of expanded temporal
space.

Somehow,
time is stretched. They're playing at the appropriate tempo. Decay is
fully expressed—the amp is not clipping the tail of the note. What
enables this phenomenon?

A big
factor may be the 9008A's heavy and consistent application of damping.
Any good amp will sufficiently damp the mids on up—I'm used to this in
the treble and midrange. What the 9008A does is extend that to the low
register, so it is consistent from top to bottom. The 9008A has just as
much control over the low end as it has over the midband. In fact, it is
100% in control. There is no smearing and no frequency overhang. This
clarity in the low end, in turn, impacts visibility throughout the
frequency spectrum. And the damping does wonders for soundstaging.

You
won't hear runaway events, as when a particular frequency at a certain
SPL triggers a jarring, piercing treble projectile from out of nowhere,
or a low frequency wave that excites the room and booms uncontrollably.
At least, there are fewer of these events than with other amps.

Slow Responders?

Another
reason the 9008A soundstage will never bite you is because the transient
has a rounded edge. Don't let this lead you to think the amp is
slow—nothing could be further from the truth. The 9008A moves like a
sports car. If you consider most audiophiles having the equivalent of a
Honda Civic, the Tenor may be likened to a Rolls Royce Phantom, with its
quick and luxurious ride; the Soulution to a Porsche Turbo that lets you
feel every move; and the 9008A, on the other hand, is like an AMG
Mercedes S-Class German Touring car, luxurious, powerful and smooth.

Tone and Timbre

Let's
move on to item two. Again, just as it was for macro dynamics, my hunch
was on target, but I overestimated the impact.

Saturated tone is one of the things the MBL brand is known for and the
9008A has it in spades. Its tonal density is the envy of many
solid-state amplifier manufacturers. I touched on this previously in my
discussion of the amps' dynamics. You'll be hard pressed to find better
than the 9008A.

From the
first push of the ON button, it didn't even occur to me to get up and
fiddle around with the sound. Fiddle with what? The 9008A satisfies. I
stayed put in the listening seat and the 9008A remained as it began,
placed alongside each speaker, directly on the carpet, surrounded by
Kubala-Sosna cabling, without a third-party footer, an amp stand or
power conditioning. The mbl 9008A is truly plug-n-play.

OK, now
let's get to the comparison. Limiting our scope to solid-state, in terms
of timbre only the Soulution 710 betters it. The 9008A renders timbre a
bit flatter. Similar to its even-handed, consistent treatment of
frequency bandwidth, volume levels and damping, so too some elements of
timbre were consistent regardless of which instrument is playing. (As
you see, consistency comes up again and again with this amp.) While
there's no trouble discerning which instrument is playing, the Soulution
710 has more complexity.

Expanding the comparison to include the Tenor, there is no question the
9008A doesn't have the aural deliciousness and sheer density of this
hybrid's tone. Tubes in general do tone and timbre better than
solid-state and the Tenor is among the best in this department. The
Tenor is extremely good at breaking out the various instruments of the
orchestra. It easily differentiates among similar sounding ones, like
clarinet and oboe. (Speaking of which, you should hear the Ypsilon VPS
100 phono stage in this regard. It's truly magical.)

To
introduce these aspects of filament timbre, I swapped in a tubed preamp,
the Veloce LS-1. The result was sensational, one of the best sounds I've
ever had.

Let me
repeat: the 9008A performs at a very high level here and we're talking
about the best of the best. I took note of the differences from the
other amps because that's my job, and then sat back for more listening
pleasure.

Appearance and Cosmetics

It's funny. When I installed the Soulution
710 stereo amp, people compared its girth to an industrial air
conditioning unit. Now I'm looking at two chassis, each bigger than the
Soulution. They look like they mean business.

The 9008A is a scaled down version of MBL's
flagship 9011 amplifier. The look is masculine and massive—and
expensive. The amp is available in piano arctic silver, piano black or
piano white. Any color amp has a choice of 18K gold-plated or
chrome-plated accents (logo, switches). Everything is overbuilt. No
chintzy binding posts here! But isn't that what you want at this price
point? The binding posts are an mbl design and built in-house like
everything else in the MBL factory outside Berlin.

At the
end of an evening's use the amp is barely warm. The 16 Sanken Bipolar
output devices per chassis are mounted to massive copper bars and then
to the heat sinking on the chassis. Each device runs at a minimum load.

Each
anodized aluminum chassis has a bar of LED indicator lights on the front
panel and a Standby switch. The main On/Off switches are around back. In
Standby, the input electronics are active but the outputs are muted.
The amps need the usual 45 to 60 minutes to warm-up. The recommendation
is to leave the amps on but in Standby mode when not in use.

Stereo or Mono?

One 9008A can be used as a stereo amp with
single-ended interconnects. However, the manufacturer strongly
recommends you use it as a monoblock, with balanced interconnect cables
and a balanced input source.

The amp's design is differential balanced:
there are two amps inside each monoblock, one for the ON phase; the
other for the OFF phase. When used in balanced mono mode, it is a true
differential amp. Stereo connection is only available in single-ended
mode, where one amp sees the left channel's input… same for the right
channel. This is only conceived as an upgrade path so a customer can use
a single amp in stereo until he later adds a second to achieve full
differential monoblocks.

You will need two power cords for each amp.
That's right—four power cords are needed if you want to get optimum
sound. Each 9008A has two power transformers—the Main and the Boost
power—with an associated, lighted On
/ Off rocker switch and 15 amp IEC receptacle on the rear panel. Each PC
powers one transformer.

Two PCs
with two
transformers,
two capacitor groups, and
two output groups

The two
transformers charge two capacitor groups, which in turn feed two output
groups. If you use a single power cord only one transformer will charge
both capacitor groups. You won't get nearly the headroom the amp is
capable of and you might experience soft clipping on peaks or with
difficult speaker loads.

Bi-wiring

The manufacturer also recommends bi-wiring
your speakers. Bi-wiring with a mono-block is desirable and audible.

It improves the amp's damping capability by
better controlling the speakers' back EMF (return Electro Motive Force
fed back from the speaker into the amp). Two sets of binding posts are
provided for mono bi-wiring, as well as a set when using a single amp in
stereo.

Conclusion

I've
been on a roll with a succession of world-class amplifiers. The mbl
9008A Reference joins that group as one of the three best amps I've
auditioned. It's been quite a ride.

These
solid-state mono-blocks are on the accurate side of the fence, but it's
an accuracy tempered by many tube-like qualities. The 9008A is in total
control. There are no runaway events—consistent damping across the
frequency spectrum takes care of that. This does wonders for
soundstaging: it is unwavering, ultra precise and clear as a bell.

For
macro dynamics—the headroom required to pull off symphonic
reproduction—the 9008A can't be bettered at this price point. Whatever
the signal demand, the mbl 9008A scales magnificently. Its dynamic range
was so expansive, the limiting factor became my room.

The
takeaway is no surprise. The 9008A's voicing was just my cup of tea:
everything was happening on an exceedingly high plane
and my YG Anat Studio speakers just loved them. Warm and clear—these contradictory adjectives describe the 9008A.
With this amp, you can have your cake and eat it, too. Marshall Nack